Capitalism and Inequality
What the Right and the Left Get Wrong
Jerry Z. MullerJERRY Z. MULLER is Professor of History at the Catholic University of America and the author of The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Western Thought.
Detail of A Social History of the State of Missouri by Thomas Hart Benton. (Getty Images / John Elk)
Recent political debate in the United States and other advanced capitalist democracies has been dominated by two issues: the rise of economic inequality and the scale of government intervention to address it. As the 2012 U.S. presidential election and the battles over the "fiscal cliff" have demonstrated, the central focus of the left today is on increasing government taxing and spending, primarily to reverse the growing stratification of society, whereas the central focus of the right is on decreasing taxing and spending, primarily to ensure economic dynamism. Each side minimizes the concerns of the other, and each seems to believe that its desired policies are sufficient to ensure prosperity and social stability. Both are wrong.
Inequality is indeed increasing almost everyw